Frazz by Jef Mallett for October 31, 2018

Ahh, of course! “A River Runs Through It.” Good job, Jef!

Never mind that. What is Frazz supposed to be?

Wikipedia gives the quote as “closer to ten than two,” but it’s been a while since I’ve read the book for myself.

Closer to ten than two

Pretty obscure, IMO

After my brother and I became good fishermen, we realized that our father was not a great fly caster, but he was accurate and stylish and wore a glove on his casting hand. As he buttoned his glove in preparation to giving us a lesson, he would say, “It is an art that is performed on a four-count rhythm between ten and two o’clock.”

Norman Maclean also wrote an excellent book called “Young Men and Fire” about the Mann Gulch Fire in 1949.

Duh really!

I have it! Norman Maclean in “A River Runs Through It.”

Looking back at yesterdays comic, did anyone notice Jane is playing Cat’s Cradle with the fishing line?

Wait, did Caulfield pick this costume just to have an excuse to leave early?

Nice work Caulfield, one of my favorite books!

Is Frazz dressed as Woody Woodpecker?

Ah! My hubby grew up in Montana. His Dad’s physician had to cool himself down in a river one day after fly fishing to help himself have more time to deal with a snake bite.

Ha! First time I ever guessed who Caufield was correctly on my first try (yesterday). That is pretty damn amazing for me. :)

For me, fly fishing is wonderful, and my pipe has always been a perfect accoutrement for the activity for me. :)

Frazz is a penguin

Caulfield and Frazz are quoting from a book which has a title much like my old man bladder…

I told everyone today, my costume is so much scarier than yours…they said you’re not in a costume…I replied oh yes I am…i’m dressed as a telemarketer

I think that the twelve and two references are talking about the back cast and the forward cast when fly fishing, so I support the idea that it’s a reference to “A River Runs Through It”

Frazz15 hrs ·

The first few years of syndication, Frazz was not huge. That’s the way it tends to go with show business, unless you’re already known for something else or extremely well marketed or extremely lucky, or come combination. Today, Frazz is a modest success. That is NOT the way it tends to go. The way syndication tends to go is away. Getting syndicated is long odds. Staying syndicated is even longer odds. So whether I needed to or not (I needed to), I chose not to give up my day job for the first couple of years. That was a lot of work, a lot of stress and not much spare time. It certainly wasn’t conducive to training at any kind of competitive level for endurance sports, but it did require some measures to preserve sanity. One of the alternatives I pondered was maybe I could fly-fish.

Fly fishing was inherently beautiful and peaceful and promised to take me away, physically and mentally … and occasionally, without demanding me constantly. I don’t know if any of that was true, because I didn’t end up taking up fly fishing. And truth be told, I wouldn’t have taken it up for those reasons. I would have taken it up because I read “A River Runs Through It,” by Norman MacLean.

In addition to being a splendid book, “A River Runs Through It” was also made into a wonderful movie. And that movie’s marquee poster was, hands down, the most stunning,jaw-droppingly gorgeous photo of, well, just about anything that I’ve seen. You’re familiar with it, right? If you’ve seen it, you remember it. A lone angler stands on a rock mid-river, floating arcs of line in the biggest, loosest, most disciplined cloud against a lush bank of foliage cast through with rays of light, as if God Himself is trying to keep up.

The cast is poetry, but its own kind. It looks free-form, but you know it has a strict meter. Cue the elder MacLean’s metronome. It is … serpentine. How serpentine? It’s a movie poster, and it didn’t make me see the movie. It made me read the book. Then I had to see the movie. It doesn’t go straight where it’s going. It gets there, but it takes its own elegant path. “A River Runs Through It” is prose about poetry, written in monofilament.

Frazz is costumed as a Sdork, which is in character for him!

I figured it was either “A River Runs Through It” or “Trout Fishing in America”.

“A River Runs Through It”